Product Details

Vendor Details

Looker Data Sciences

www.looker.com/

Founded 2012

United States

About Looker

Looker is a data analytics solution that's helping companies rethink business intelligence & data visualization. With Looker, teams can break down data silos by quickly and easily integrating data from across data sources into a single view. Everyone in your organization can make better, more informed choices when they access to fresh, reliable data.

Pros: When I first saw Looker (during a long BI evaluation process where we demo'd perhaps 5-10 tools) I knew it was what I had been hoping for in a BI vendor. The ease of dragging dimensions and metrics onto a canvas, the fluid way that you could generate reports, and the simplicity of drilling down into the source data all suggested this was a tool that had been built well from the ground up.
Other vendors seemed to trap you into a narrow view of your metrics, but with Looker the only restrictions were the ones built into your data model. It could easily flex to accommodate whatever data you wanted to look at.
The LookML language and the way Looker is designed to interact with your data is pretty brilliant. Even a non-data scientist and non-SQL user like me could get the hang of the basics ;)
The range of options, the configurability, the flexibility...all aces. Really you only get stuck by your imagination, the tool is powerful enough that you can solve most problems if you have the know-how.
The team is also great. Awesome culture, friendly support.
They have a continual flow of new features and improvements.

Cons: You do need a good BI person or ETL developer to really get the most out of this tool.
Setting up your data model really well and going to the outer limits to solve some particularly difficult queries are all things I would have had a hard time doing without technical resources on the team.
Of course it's possible Looker helps with a lot of this during implementation; we pretty much controlled our own because we had the folks in house to do it.

Recommendations to other buyers: Envision your day to day reporting and the ad hoc queries you might need to answer. Put them to your sales team and see how Looker might solve them. Get a good understanding of what you'll need to both set up and maintain to suit your ongoing needs.

Looker allows everyone in your company, even the less tech-savvy, to make data-driven decisions.

Dec 13, 2017

Teena B.

Implementation Specialist / Customer Success

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I love the customization of Looker, and that you can put large amounts of data into the hands of anyone -- in a way that makes sense [to them]!

While their product is great, it speaks volumes to the team. It's an amazing group of people that continue to receive feedback from their customers and iterate time and time again on their product. They truly care about data and their customers, and they want to empower them the best they can.

Cons: When modeling views, I wish you could define better filters for measures but it's limited. There are workarounds, meaning modeling out several additional dimensions to arrive at the measure you need to pull regularly, but it'd be much more efficient to allow for measures to be more nuanced.

Large dashboards (with 25+ tiles) can take awhile to load, which is understandable. Once their "merge results" feature is fully rolled out and we're able to save them as new tiles or looks, it should help resolve the need for so many tiles.

Neither of these two things are a big deal, and I wouldn't let this deter you from considering this software.

Overall: We get to force-multiply our impact by making it easy for users in all departments to make data-driven decisions and help allow that to drive their day-to-day.

Looker transforms companies

Aug 04, 2015

Daniel d.

CIO

Marketing and Advertising

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4.5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It's a great product for giving people in all departments of your company access to data and allow them to explore what your data can provide. Rather than having to always go to the Business Intelligence or Analytics team, people of any level can query data without any SQL knowledge or understanding and yield results that are either directly actionable or ask more questions that can be answered using Looker. We ran an initial 30 days trial with a view that only our analysts and BI team members would use it. By the end of the 30 days, everyone from the COO down to the account teams were using it. It's amazing.
Furthermore, the vendor is smart, responsive and constantly improving the product, delivering a new version approximately every month. Their customer service is second-to-none and they are always happy to hear about new features that you need in the product. Very pleased overall with their service, strategy and plan to expand our use of them to our clients over the next few months.

Cons: Looker are still very heavily US based. They have just started an EU office, but support is still largely limited to US West Coast hours (although they seem to wake up at stupid o'clock to deal with some of our issues and plan to have support in the EU soon).

Recommendations to other buyers: Try it! To be fair, if you have a terrible underlying data warehouse, then all Looker will do is expose that. Make sure your data house is in reasonable order first, although a trial may show you think you need to fix that you didn't realise before. That said, Looker also makes you want to fix the problems in your underlying data so often the best way of making sure these fixes take place is to implement it and see what happens.

We've been using Looker since about an year. Our leadership loves it!

Oct 06, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Internet

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Things I like about this product:

1. Ease of use by our users - very intutive

2. Integration with our big data platform and databases. We use ours with Redshift and Aurora and they take most advantage of both systems.

3. Their super awesome customer support - always available chat who are really good at what they are doing.

4. Custom install options along with their hosted solutions.

5. Their whole team is involved with the product and customers top down. Really appreciate their responsiveness and customer-centric approach.

Cons: We really don't care about visualizations, but that can use some improvement to those who care.

The LDAP integration setup is a pain. It works well once it's all setup.

There is no roll-back once a version is installed. Work around is to restore from a backup. Would love to be able to do that as sometimes things don't always work the way we are used to and might require a rollback.

Overall: Our business users love the self-serv options that this provides. It drastically cut down the effort our analysts have to spend answering routine questions and allow them to focus more on the value added activities.

When analytics becomes part of your operations -

Jul 30, 2015

Fabien B.

Product Manager

Computer Software

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Everything.
Looker made it sexy for BI developers, and intuitive easy to use for business user.
Their support is extremely knowledgeable and always available if you need any help.
Their engineers are brilliant and their hard work is allowing frequent releases that are going in the right directions.
Looker is customer driven and will deliver what makes sense for every user.
We love the creativity and flexibility this tool is offering us, as we are able to manipulate LookML to create anything, from data extract to Process automation.
Their growth is EXPONENTIAL.
Their Doc is well maintained so you are never lost.
Their community became part of their offering, you cannot find this elsewhere.

Cons: We have been satisfied since day 1!
I dislike the fact that our internal users are not curious enough (or don't get it) to explore data on their own. Maybe a different UI would help people discover on their own.

Recommendations to other buyers: Do you want to host the solution or having it hosted?
Are there any implementation costs associated?
Training cost?
Do you get support?
Time to implement ?
Can you use this tool for yourself? for your clients?
Do they have permissions levels?
make sure that you gather all of your internal requirements and that which ever solution pleases everyone not only marketing or engineering.

Controlled Analytics Exploration

May 17, 2018

Vincent W.

Sr Planning Analyst

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

3/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

2
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It's a great data exploration tool for users who normally would get anxious when given a large dataset in something like Excel. It's generally simple to use and there can be unlimited Viewers (users at the lowest permissions level) through the enterprise product. Data Visualization is essentially done for you and Exploers (users at the second level of permissions) can build new visualizations & turn them into interactive dashboards.

On the Looker platform, Explorers can locate a view (called an Explore) and then are given a list of dimensions and measures they can pull into a table. Users can create new dimensions using calculated fields and then save their views so any users with Viewer permissions (and up) can see what was put together.

Cons: With simplicity comes lack of flexibility. More skilled data analysts will want more flexibility than Looker can provide but at the same time you need to have highly skilled Data Analysts to be the Developers (high level of permissions) to set up the data so that less skilled analysts (the users who benefit from Looker most) who are Explorers don't build views that grossly misrepresent the data.

My biggest pet peeve with this software as an Explorer is that you cannot make calculations on the base data...only the data that you pull into your table (called table calculations). That is a major feature that Tableau has that Looker does not have at the Explorer permission level. Of course developers can use LookML (Lookers data language) to create a new column...but a Developer license is more expensive and creating the fields take time and it's something you constantly will need.

Overall: Like I said, it's a great tool for analysts that don't need a lot of flexibility or maybe just aren't used to working with a lot of data. To get the full value out of this software, you'll need a core group of experienced Data Analysts that can learn fast (to learn Lookers Table Calculation code which is similar to SQL) who can build a bunch of dashboards and views. You really don't want people who aren't savvy with data doing a lot of the creating because measures are always aggregated based on the dimensions you pull into each table...if a user forgets to add a specific dimension then measures could show the wrong value. This could be offset by having really good developers who architect the data in a way that doesn't allow this to happen.

Finally a flexible reporting tool that is not a nightmare to maintain

Aug 17, 2015

Alan C.

Analytics Developer

Computer Software

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4.5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: So many things are done right:
- The simplicity of creating a meta schema using lookml, the learning curve is lightning fast
- The flexibility of the system, making data available to intern customer has never been so easy
- The support team is really knowledgeable and fast to answer
- The roadmap is clear and moving forward as a great speed. Most missing features that we have in mind are usually in development when we ask
- A really fun team, every meeting with looker is always a pleasure

Cons: Even if the team is moving fast and offering more and more features, they still lack on some of them. Mainly on dashboards.
It went a long way since the early days and now I'd say that 95% of our needs are covered.
On the other hand, their releases are so fast it's hard to keep track with all that was already implemented, the documentation is always a bit behind and searching for something precise on the discourse page can be a nightmare.

Recommendations to other buyers: - Have some data ready that you want to analyze.
Don't just jump on any tool without having a fair understanding of your own database tables.
A demo on fake data will never tell you is the tool is good or not.
- Don't hesitate to try other tools to see how looker utterly destroyed the complexity of doing reports

I work as the lead BI developer and Administrator of Looker at my company.

Oct 05, 2017

Terence K.

Senior Business Intelligence Developer

51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: For your developers, the customer service is superior. They also do a great job reaching out to your primary users. With respect to frontend users, those using it for simpler data retrieval/review, their interface is rather easy to use and logical to work through. They do a lot to make the system as simple as possible. Only your BI developers and/or data engineering team can clutter the space.

Cons: If you decide to purchase the non-customized version, the color palette Looker uses is rather bland (More noticeable to executives and heavy users-most users will be fine with it though). The company's integrations are rather limited, but supposed to improve with Looker 5 (via the Action Hub). However, it seems that most integrations will require purchasing from third parties, instead of being a Looker hosted and "controlled" solution you purchase through them. That complicates the process.

Looker makes BI & analytics easy

Mar 14, 2017

Amy A.

Director, Enterprise Data Operations

Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use, monetary value and ability to prototype and show data quickly. Their CS team (our account exec and technical support rep are amazing) and support are the best vendors I've ever worked with.

Cons: Performance issues, it's a new product so some standard features it's missing - around mapping separate projects together, some access/security features, and lack of self-service model layer.

Overall: Looker allows you to get up and running quickly with it's prototyping capability and LookML functionality. It makes it easy for our enterprise data team to get data in front of the customer quickly while then going behind the scenes and adding it to our data warehouse. It's ease of use and value for the money allows it to meet our needs as our corporate BI/analytics tool!

Recommendations to other buyers: Because it's new and already has so much, it will quickly add the small subset of features/functionality that it's missing. Their CS team and support is the best I've ever worked with!

Easy, Flexible, Effective Data Analysis

Apr 20, 2019

Verified Reviewer

Information Services, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Looker allows data to be accessible by team members who do not have technical skills like SQL or Python. It's user interface is easy to use; quickly and easily one can have impressive visualizations encompassing complex data sets. Looker is a powerful tool, useful for adding data visualizations to reports, making data-driven business decisions, and any other task requiring you to analyze data. Looker has also put out a great series of instructional videos which are helpful in learning how to use the program optimally.

Cons: The initial setup and development of Looker requires time, attention, and work. The software is a great user interface to access data, but configuring the program to access your data requires a lot of programming, troubleshooting, and general work from the data science team. The utility of the program is definitely worth the work, but you should not expect to begin using the program as soon as you get it--it requires some setup.

Overall: Looker is an excellent tool. I highly recommend it! While it requires some setup at the start, it ultimately saves time by empowering non-technically skilled coworkers to analyze data on their own!

Looker is a very powerful and userfriendly tool

Oct 24, 2017

Balbina W.

Data Analyst

Sports, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The models, explores and looks are very easy to navigate once all set up. The SQL runner is a great feature that helps with querying the datasets that are available before diving in and creating explores. Dashboarding and sharing reports are also very easy with Looker. It makes increasing data visibility in the organisation very easy.

Cons: The visualisation features have come a long way over the years but sometimes it is still hard to customise visualisations.

Great Customer Service

May 15, 2018

Daniel B.

Business Analyst

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: The looker team has great customer service. They are flexible and easy to reach. The chat feature in the product is awesome, as it quickly connects you to a Customer Success rep who can help you with pretty much anything!

Cons: The cost for this product is quite high compared to other BI tools. Also, this product requires a full time data engineer to keep the backend of the product to build new data models.

Empowers entire companies with data with an intuitive software and incredible customer service

Oct 07, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Apparel & Fashion, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Even non technical people, get excited to use this product once they know how!

Customization ability

Incredible data visualizations

Allows me to automate and optimize processes

The friendliest and most helpful customer service

Cons: Loading dashboards can be very slow

Validating code can sometimes take forever

Occasional bugs make it temporarily go down for the entire company

I use Looker every day, all day to make the data actionable.

Oct 19, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Computer Software, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: They are always improving the product and taking my requests seriously. I have been using it for 2 years, and all of my requests have been met.

Cons: Sometimes the requests take time, and with all the software updates, sometimes the documentation is a little lacking, but support is always there to help.

Overall: Being able to distribute limited customized data reports to over 2,000 people!

Detailed Data

Oct 03, 2018

Catherine F.

Marketing Manager

Computer Software, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Looker has allowed my company to organized and dig deeper into data that we collect in our CRM. You can really get down to the specific details of things. I like that you can easily create a look whenever needed and have the option to not save it if it's not needed again. I also like LookerBot for Slack.

Cons: It definitely has a bit of a learning curve. I still struggle with creating some reports but as someone who is not data-centric I've learned how to use it pretty well

Best Software Available for Centralized Analytics

Oct 05, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Legal Services, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I like that the software is web based so it can be accessed everywhere. I am also really happy that analytics is now completely centralized in my company. This makes helping people get the data that they need so much easier, and I do not have to spend much time on ad hoc queries anymore.

Cons: I do run into query performance issues when there are multiple users querying at once. There is also a pretty large initial investment when setting up the implementation.

Great tool...but hard to learn

Mar 19, 2018

Emily M.

Email Marketing Specialist

Pharmaceuticals, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I use Looker for two reasons. 1) to see my sales statistics and 2) to pull lists of subscriber data. Looker truly helps you to understand your data better than other tools.

Cons: I've had a steep learning curve with this tool. There's not a lot of formal training opportunities or help documentation.

Looker is very easy for business users but could use some improvements in visualizations

Sep 05, 2017

Susan S.

Marketing Director

10,001+ employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Comments: Looker is great but you need to have power users who are able to set everything up in the background.

Pros: Once set up, Looker makes it super simple for business users to manipulate and analyze data. It creates all the joins int he background and allows a drag and drop interface.

Cons: Visualizations are not very dynamic. It is difficult to change the order in which chart series appear, for example. It's also difficult to always get the chart to look exactly how you want it.

Pros: Able to rapidly organise very large data sets and share dashboards and views. Fairly straightforward to build queries even for non-technical

Cons: Some limitations in reporting data views (e.g. Histograms) and doesn't have wide range of options for exporting to other reporting packages

Great tool!

Mar 14, 2017

Mohammed Z.

Senior BI Developer

Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Customer Service, Ease of Use

Cons: Features

Overall: After using looker for a coupe years now, I can definitely say its an awesome tool. It is super easy to learn and use but the best part about this tool is the customer service; support and the account managers go above and beyond to solve problems and actually listen to you when doing product planning. Keep it up!

Great support, great people, great product!

Oct 05, 2017

Verified Reviewer

201-500 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: Support! Smart people that give quick and accurate answers. Ease of use and simple flow makes it easy to learn and teach

Cons: Visualizations seem a little immature for the product but hopefully with the newer version, we can download js visualizations on our cloud instance

Looker has helped every single person at my company

Nov 17, 2017

Verified Reviewer

51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: I love how power Looker is and their customer service is above and beyond. They've been super helpful with everything.

Cons: There's not much I don't like about Looker. There is a little bit of learning curve when starting off but other than there's nothing to not like.

Powerful, customisable BI tool

Apr 07, 2019

Verified Reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: - Easy to use interface

- Extensive feature set

Cons: - The actual visualisations are not as attractive as some of their competitors

- I've occasionally run into bugs when displaying dashboards at low resolutons

Looker has made my the data and reporting part of my job much easier.

Oct 06, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Internet, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

3
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The ability to create easily digestible visualizations in a matter of seconds. Looker has brought together all of our different data sources in one hub to read and analyze and present data.

Cons: It requires an admin to make it usable for a wider audience. It is not out of the box accessible for someone who isn't familiar with the data setup

Very happy with the Looker support

Oct 06, 2017

Johan d.

CDO

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: - Support team

- Philosophy of data driving to action in one platform

- Simplified frontend and technical backend to allow range of users access to the same model

Cons: - Limited visualisation options in Looker 4, but this should be improving soon

- Cost is hard to justify for Asia-based clients where the salary arbitrage is less of a factor

Looker gives me on-demand access to data the way I want it, with great visuals and sharing options.

Oct 06, 2017

Greg B.

Senior Director of Account Services

Events Services, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Looker helps me put actionable data in front of various teams within my company, regardless of how tech savvy they are. I love being able to schedule reports and alerts so I can spend more time working on higher value items. Looker's support is exceptional, from the top down to the chat team, they are responsive and helpful, and just nice people to boot.

Overall: Easily accessible data, ability to share in various formats and upon demand. It's easy to create custom queries on the fly.

Excellent Visual Tool

Jan 13, 2019

Verified Reviewer

Financial Services, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Visual. Data pulled from SQL queries are made meaningful by placing them in colorful, and easy-to-read graphs.

Cons: Navigation. The Explore view, where data is incorporated into a graph, can sometimes look busy depending on the amount of columns being used, and if the filters, graph, and data sections are pulled open.

Overall: Looker helped me form meaningful information so that I could send helpful reports to other teams. As I used it more, I even gained a better understand of how SQL works.

Great experience thus far from the onboarding to ongoing support

Oct 06, 2017

Verified Reviewer

Food & Beverages, 501-1000 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Ease of use and self-service type model where business users can manage things themselves. I also like the fact we can easily add different data sources and view them together.

Cons: LookML does take a bit of time to learn, but it's definitely worth it. Visualization is good, but not yet great.

Great software with continuus updates

Jul 21, 2018

Isaac P.

Web Developer

201-500 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I like that you truly do not have to understand SQL to end up being an expert and ask the ideal concerns in Looker. Looker is continuously making updates, they deliver really rapidly. I have a favorable outlook of this item.

Cons: I dislike for how long it takes given that it never ever truly caches the information. I need to truly make certain the questions I compose or the concerns I ask are really restricted as an outcome.

This platform has been great in terms of implementation.

Oct 18, 2017

Brijesh P.

Analytics Manager

Hospitality, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: A company doesn't need a proper data model to be able to use this BI Software. The ability define measures that aren't in certain tables are amazing.

Cons: Documentation could be better on certain functions such as html or liquid variables because not all users are proficient in html.

The best BI tool in the market!

Apr 18, 2019

Matt K.

Product Manager

Internet, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: - Intuitive enough to be used for multiple functions/ department

- Permissioning (dev mode vs normal) is assuring

- Uses SQL-like syntax for data manipulation

- Dashboards you can customize, favorite, publish, solves hundreds of use cases

- Constant improvement in its features and stability

Cons: - Although LookML (it's scripting language) is similar to SQL, I hope it was SQL or at least it does a better job with training LookML to its users.

Really powerful but difficult for some colleagues to pick up

Nov 30, 2018

Verified Reviewer

Financial Services, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

2
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It's amazing for any deep data analysis, exporting segments, and stat dashboards, once all your dashboards are set up, comprehensive real time stats are available at the click of a button.

Cons: Because it's such a comprehensive product, it's quite daunting at first glance. We've had trouble with some of our less technical team members taking the 'I don't understand Looker' stance before giving it a proper go.

Consistently Improving Software with Powerful Functionalities

Oct 06, 2017

Jiayu (Sophia) Q.

Business Intelligence Analyst

51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: It's everything you can think of at current stage for BI tool, and they will think of the future for you. Looker has been consistently working on listening really well from their customers and update their features.

Cons: It takes time at first if you are building out your BI model completely from scratch or transit from other tool, but the reward is huge and there are a lot of Looker people helping you in the way.

Excellent Data Visualizer

Oct 31, 2018

Jake C.

eCommerce Analyst

Internet, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Works well for those that aren't quite experts in excel and prefer a different method of visualization.

Support/Updates are solid. I always like to parrot "invest in the team," and that's what you're doing with Looker. It seems they listen to their customers & feedback and take action on that information to improve the experience.

Cons: Sometimes a power-user who multi-tasks w/ a larger dashboard (myself, ha) can find it takes longer to load. It's not a huge deal, and maybe our computers need an upgrade (when don't they), but it's something to mention. There aren't any huge drawbacks to this program I can really think of.

Overall: Streamlines data for those with less experience in excel, making it easier for us to coordinate efforts, drive decision-making, and on board new users.

Super-powerful tool if you know what you're doing

Mar 18, 2018

Verified Reviewer

Computer Software, 11-50 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: I love Looker for its handy dashboards and queries. Of course, as someone who doesn't speak "database queries" I have to rely on someone more technical to set most of these things up for me.

Cons: There's only so much utility I can get out of the tool without knowing how to create database queries. I'd love to be able to manipulate data in Looker without knowing any query languages so I could take advantage of more of Looker's power.

With looker I feel with a little bit of "how" I can easily get the "why".

Oct 25, 2017

Paco A.

Operations Intern

Food & Beverages, 1001-5000 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

5
/
5

Value for Money

Pros: - The constantly updated content. I feel the vehicle is moving forward all the time.

- The ease of making a deep and helpful analysis.

- Really nice visualisation of looks.

Cons: - The division of Dashboards and looks in each user space is a bit rigid. Folders could help to organise it better.

- It would help to search for individual spaces from people (I think I could do it before)

Amazing piece of software that opens up so much data for use across the business by non data staff

Cons: complex nature of adding calculations with data within the platform than in the data warehouse.

Overall: Flexibility of data input as well as custom calculations, seemingly unlimited creative opportunities that make the tool useful for presentation as well as analysis. Saving looks to a dashboard to use every morning is amazing.

Looks pretty but hard to use

Apr 24, 2019

Verified Reviewer

Construction, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

2
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

2
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The charts, tables and graphs look very beautiful. It takes a full time data analyst to get looker up and running. The results look great and can be published online where execs can use to drill down.

Cons: Looker is not a drag and drop type of BI Tool. You'll need a full time data analyst to use SQL to pull everything together, build tables first. Once that's there, they can then send to people to put together tables.

To get anything functional requires lots of time and is not easy for people to use that aren't tech savvy. It is also extremely expensive compared to Tableau

Overall: Didn't like it. We had it for a year and everyone on the data and operations team hated it - except for the one person who decided to buy it

Best organization-wide analytics/BI platform out there

Dec 19, 2017

Verified Reviewer

51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: The LookML layer makes things easy to scale. The API and interfaces into other software such as Google Sheets as well as functions like email schedules allow opening up data much easier.

Cons: The Look-Dashboard-Space system and managing content can become burdensome as use of Looker scales. Not being able to cross-reference a Look across Spaces results in duplicative Looks.

Good Program with a lots of possibilities

Feb 08, 2018

Elizabeth M.

Management accountant

Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 2+ years

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Comments: Good program with a lot of potential and you can get information for everything that needed

Pros: You can see different information, the update is quick and you can get a lot of different reports with all the information that you need

Cons: A little difficult to get around the program , I am used to to the reports that I have a the moment but I still need some help to create a new one

Easy to learn, not very intuitive but really useful when dominated

Dec 22, 2017

Alvaro G.

Ops

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Easy to use when learned. Data is accessible and easy to compare. Analysis is easy using Dashboards and it is very easy to customize it.

Cons: Sometimes data from different Explores regarding the same topic gives different information. It is difficult to learn at the beginning, but it gets easier with time.

Overall: Data accessibility

Looker Review

Aug 29, 2018

Oana D.

Director of Marketing

Financial Services, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I use Looker extensively to generate reports for my clients. I love the functionality. It allows me to create recurring reports that can be sent automatically to my clients. I can also create entire dashboards with multiple reports that can be pushed out automatically. The visualization is great and reports can be generated in multiple formats.

Cons: I don't have anything negative to say about the system itself. The only challenge I have is with how often the password needs to be reset.

Looker Brings A New Meaning To Big Data

Nov 04, 2018

Veronica M.

Financial Planner

Management Consulting, 1-10 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

5/5

Overall

5
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Looker has been amazing with the data and analytics they provide. We've been able to make so many significant improvements to our client experience across the board!

Cons: It does get a bit overwhelming at times to see just how much insight you can get into your business. Just stay the course,

Cons: It could have better slack integration so we could get daily reports not just sent over email but also through a native slack app.

Solid data exploration product, could benefit from some polish.

Jul 30, 2015

Glenn B.

Vice President

Management Consulting

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Source: Software Advice

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

4
/
5

Customer Support

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Very accessible to developers and makes it possible to develop a strong data model on top of existing relational data sets. Make time-based analysis very easy to do.

Cons: Difficult to edit model once in place. Data visualization and dashboard features are not strong. Lacking global filtering and templated dashboards. Setting up interim data caching to prevent load on core database is difficult.

Recommendations to other buyers: If you're looking for a data exploration and ad-hoc analysis tools, Looker has a lot to offer. Report sharing, API-based integration with your own applications, and data visualization, though, is not its strong suit.

Cons: can get a bit confusing and confining with more complex queries/analysis

machine written sql can be annoying

Overall: ease of use, good analysis and visualization

Looker

Feb 01, 2019

Verified Reviewer

Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 1-2 years

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

5/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

5
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: Very easy to navigate, add filters, make reports depending on size. Very easy to visually understand information from reports. Easy to download if needed as well.

Cons: Can get confusing when you have to build a multi-layered report, not user-friendly for a first time user.

Overall: I love the data that Looker was able to give me, as this helped me make real-world decisions that turned into money for the company. Data is a driving point for a company and this program lets you take full control.

Overview of Looker

Dec 14, 2018

Yichen H.

Business Analyst

Computer Software, 51-200 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Software Advice

4/5

Overall

4
/
5

Ease of Use

4
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

4
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: - Doesn't have a steep learning curve
- LookML can be powerful if created correctly
- Awesome support (chat)

Overall: Looker gives me the possibility to build and maintain a datawarehouse, create reports and offers pivoting functionalities. with very limited resources, i was able to create these functionalities, serving 20 collegues with daily reports & enabling them to gather insights on their own. Our company (ticketswap) is growing rapidly, and so does change our database. Looker enables me to set definitions in one place and create multiple of different data models, which is perfect for a market place where users can be both buyers and sellers. The customer care is fabulous, answering fast and efficiënt

Wish mobile version was better

Apr 02, 2019

Zach S.

Enterprise AM

Food & Beverages, 201-500 employees

Used the software for: 6-12 months

Reviewer Source

Source: Capterra

4/5

Overall

2
/
5

Ease of Use

3
/
5

Features & Functionality

5
/
5

Customer Support

3
/
5

Value for Money

Likelihood to Recommend:Not LikelyExtremely Likely

Pros: I like being able to see into the metrics and KPIs our team is tracking and get a better picture of exactly what is happening.